Re: Is enlightenment dead?

[Russell Keith-Magee <keithmag cs curtin edu au>]

Glenn Valenta wrote:
> 
> I just installed the RH fisher prerelease and after transferring my home
> directory, I noticed that the packages doesn't include enlightenment. I also
> have notice the there has been no activity on the website in a while and there
> is no discussion here on the list.
>
> Has enlightenment development been redirected or stopped?

Enlightenment is alive and well; check out www.enlightenment.org

However, the connection with Gnome is a lot weaker than it once was.
When Raster (one of the key E developers) left RedHat Labs, there was a
bit of bad blood spread around, and he started to take the E project in
his own direction. 

AFAIK, enlightenment maintains Gnome WM Hint compliance; it also has KDE
WM compliance. However, Enlightenment as a project is extending beyond
being just a window manager, and becoming a complete desktop project in
itself, with its own widget toolkit, file manager, help system, etc. As
always with E, the focus is on themeability, customisation and perty
flashing lights. 

Gnome now uses Sawfish (it was called sawmill for a while, but there was
a trademark dispute) as its default window manager - this is the WM
shipped with Ximian Gnome. You can still use Enlightenment if you so
desire; download the RPM's from sourceforge, and set your preferred
window manager in the Gnome control center) but in my experience, less
and less gnomers are doing this. IMHO, Sawfish runs a lot faster, with a
smaller memory footprint, yet still provides all the functionality I
require.
 
> If so, is there a way to transfer my E preferences and settings over to it's
> replacment?

AFAIK, there is no "e.conf > sawfish.conf" translator; however, sawfish
is very much themable and programmable (in LISP). Many of the popular E
themes have been ported (see sawfish.themes.org), and sawfish has a gui
config editor in the gnome control panel. Getting your preferred E
window behaviours into sawfish shouldn't be too much of a drama.
 
Hope this helps,
Russ %-)

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Russell Keith-Magee
PhD Research Student
School of Computing, Curtin University of Technology
email: keithmag cs curtin edu au OR russ magee computer org
WWW:   http://www.cs.curtin.edu.au/~keithmag
Ph: +61 8 9266 2129    FAX +61 8 9266 2819
-----------------------------------------------------------
Would you care to view the ruins of my good intentions?